Watch ?World?s Largest Video Game? played on 29-story skyscraper

More than 40 years after it was first unveiled, "Pong" is once again the biggest video game in the world. No, people aren?t turning in their Xbox and Play Station gaming systems for Atari consoles. In a project by Drexel University professor Frank J. Lee, a game of "Pong" was broadcast on the side of a 29-story skyscraper in Philadelphia.

?The idea for this project began in 2008 when I was driving East on I76 in Philadelphia at night heading towards Center City,? Lee wrote on his website. ?Like many nights before, I saw the sparkling lights of the beautiful Cira Centre building. However, this night as I was staring at those lights, in my mind's eye I saw Tetris shapes outlined by those lights rotating and falling.?

When "Pong" was first released in 1972, it quickly became a national phenomenon. The game is essentially a rudimentary form of tennis, in which players use paddle joysticks to bounce a digital ball back and forth.

To make his dream a reality, Lee and his team installed hundreds of LED lights in the building?s fa?ade. He said the project took nearly five years to reach completion.

If you want to see the large-scale game of "Pong" in person, Lee will be hosting a second round of the spectacle on April 24 at 8 p.m.

About 150 people will be selected to play the giant version of the game, with most recipients being chosen by a lottery selection system.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/watch-world-largest-video-game-played-29-story-190230909.html

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Two men arrested in Canada rail terror plot

TORONTO (AP) ? Two men were arrested and charged with plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al-Qaida "elements" in Iran, police said Monday.

Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, who live in Montreal and Toronto, were planning to derail a Via Rail passenger train in Toronto but posed no immediate threat, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.

"This is the first known al-Qaida planned attack that we've experienced in Canada," Superintendent Doug Best told a news conference.

RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said the two men had "direction and guidance" from "al-Qaida elements located in Iran," though there was no reason to think the planned attacks were state-sponsored. Police said the men did not get financial support from al-Qaida, but declined to provide more details.

"It was definitely in the planning stage but not imminent," RCMP chief superintendent Jennifer Strachan said. "We are alleging that these two individuals took steps and conducted activities to initiate a terrorist attack. They watched trains and railways."

Strachan said they were targeting a route, but didn't say if it was a cross border route.

Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran who is now a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said al-Qaida has had a clandestine presence in Iran since at least 2001 and that neither the terror group nor Tehran speak openly about it.

"The Iranian regime kept some of these elements under house arrest," he said in an email to The Associated Press. "Some probably operate covertly. AQ members often transit Iran traveling between hideouts in Pakistan and Iraq."

Charges against the two men include conspiring to carry out an attack and murder people in association with a terrorist group. Police said the men are not Canadian citizens, but declined to say where they were from or why they were in the country.

RCMP Chief Superintendent Jennifer Strachan (R), Assistant Commissioner James Malizia (C) and Chief Superintendent Gaeten Courchesne (L) speak during a news conference in Toronto, Ontario, April 22, ... more? RCMP Chief Superintendent Jennifer Strachan (R), Assistant Commissioner James Malizia (C) and Chief Superintendent Gaeten Courchesne (L) speak during a news conference in Toronto, Ontario, April 22, 2013. Canadian police said on Monday they had arrested and charged two men with an "al Qaeda-supported" plot to derail a VIA passenger train. The RCMP said it had arrested Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of Montreal, and Raed Jaser, 35, of Toronto in connection with the plot, which authorities said was not linked to the Boston Marathon bombings, but likely had connections to al-Qaeda. REUTERS/Aaron Harris (CANADA - Tags: CRIME LAW TRANSPORT CIVIL UNREST) less? They had been in Canada "a significant amount of time." He would not say how long, but said they had been under investigation since last fall.

Authorities were tipped off about one of the suspects by members of his community, said Best, who would not specify which community.

The investigation was part of a cross-border operation involving Canadian law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

There is no connection between the Canadian terrorist plot and the Boston Marathon bombings, said a U.S. Justice Department official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because the source was not permitted to speak on the record about the matter.

Strachan said the two men will attend a bail hearing in Toronto on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the University of Sherbrooke in Montreal said that Esseghaier studied there in 2008-2009. More recently, he has been doing doctoral research at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, a sokeswoman at the training university confirmed. A Linked In page says a man with Esseghaier's name and academic background helped author a number of biology research papers, including on HIV and cancer detection. The page carries a photo of a black flag inscribed with the Islamic declaration of faith.

The arrests just a few months after two Canadians were found among militants killed in a terrorist siege at a gas plant in Algeria. The siege killed at least 38 hostages and 29 militants, including Ali Medlej and Xristos Katsiroubas, two high school friends from London, Ontario.

In 2006 Canadian police foiled the so-called Toronto 18 home grown plot to set off bombs outside Toronto's Stock Exchange, a building housing Canada's spy agency and a military base. The goal was to scare Canada into removing its troops from Afghanistan. The arrests made international headlines and heightened fears in a country where many people thought they were relatively immune from terrorist strikes.

___

Associated Press writers Rob Gillies in Toronto and Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this story.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-2-arrested-canada-terror-plot-195131345.html

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Losing at Board Games ? Troll in the Corner

I?m not entirely sure when it started happening.

I?m the game collector in our family.? Board games is my hobby.? I cut my teeth on chess, poker, and backgammon.? I played tabletop war games in college, for days at a time.

When my wife and I decided that we should play more games, we got into Dominion, Settlers of Catan, and Carcassonne.? There was no going back from that point.? We started getting into Reiner Knizia games, following specific designers and companies, and finding out about release dates for expansion sets.

And when I say ?we?? I mean ?me?. My wife was simply a willing participant in my gaming hobby, but not much more than that.? She would cast a wary eye at packages arriving from UPS, or bags arriving from the local game store.? It was a sort of tacit approval.? She wouldn?t have suggested it, but it was okay as a hobby.

(My other hobby is roasting coffee, and by comparison board games don?t have the same chance of smoke and fire, and are stored out of sight in a downstairs bookcase ? not in canvas bags with green beans spilling out of them.)

And then I looked up a few years later, and realized I wasn?t winning.? Much.

And at some games, I hadn?t won at all.

Hey! That?s My Fish!

The final straw was Campaign Manager 2008.? I picked up this game because I saw it at a good price.? I figured that the reviews were pretty favorable toward it, and it was worth a try.? In this game one player manages the McCain campaign, and one player manages the Obama campaign.? The game is a battle over the swing states that were in play in 2008.

I haven?t won a single game, and we have played 6 times.

My wife has started referring to herself as a ?political mastermind,? because we alternate which candidates we are playing in each game, and yet she wins every time.

And here?s the main thing: I think I?m going to win.? In fact, there have been some games that I am sure I am going to win, only to look up and realize that my wife beat me.? Again.

In this column, I will look in detail at a game I?ve played and lost, and figure out why I lost.? I will start by giving a brief summary of the game itself: why it is in our collection and why we play it.? I?ll give a description of a specific play of that game.? I might be highly detailed.? I might not be.? But I will for sure then try to figure out what happened.? Why I lost.

Thanks for reading.? If you love board games, but are losing at them with an alarming consistency, this column is for you.?? (If you are regularly winning at board games, you should write a column called ?why I am the best?? and I will read it! I have much to learn.)

Source: http://trollitc.com/2013/04/losing-at-board-games/

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'No more hurting people.' Will a safer future follow Boston tragedy's wake?

Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy killed in the Boston Marathon bomb attack, once held a sign that said 'peace' and 'no more hurting people.' Research finds a pattern of lessening violence as human history moves forward.

By Mark Trumbull,?Staff writer / April 20, 2013

A photo of Martin Richard, 8, hangs at a makeshift memorial near the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon explosions, which killed three and injured more than 170. Martin was killed in the explosions.

Matt Rourke/AP

Enlarge

Of all the images from the Boston Marathon tragedy that became suddenly iconic this week, none was more poignant than this: a photo showing how Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who died in the bomb attack, once held a sign that said ?peace? and ?no more hurting people.?

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As a city and nation struggle to move forward, that sign implies one of the big questions that remains: What can be done to prevent such acts of senseless destruction in the future?

The search for answers will take time.

In the case of the explosions that rocked the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, the suspects identified Thursday by the FBI have now been captured. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gun battle with police, while his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is at a Boston hospital under tight security.

But their motive was still a matter of investigation Saturday.

Whatever ?is eventually determined ? whether the attacks stemmed from affiliation with some terrorist ideology or by something else ? officials in cities around the nation are now thinking harder about how to protect against such potential attacks, notably on ?soft targets? like an outdoor road race that are difficult to secure.

One answer, already, is stepped-up security measures by law enforcement.

From public events in America this weekend to the running of ?the London Marathon this Sunday, the presence of law enforcement is greater than it would have been had the Boston attack not occurred. But, although Boston in recent days has seen a dramatic ?surge? of police and National Guard troops, limited government budgets and the huge number of soft targets mean that such efforts are an imperfect defense.

Another part of the answer is public vigilance ? ordinary people being alert about behavior that raises doubts about the intentions or mental stability of acquaintances. Again, this is an imperfect defense.

Some people who knew 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in school said that he did normal activities like sports and parties. ?He was never a troublemaker,? one former teacher said.

The Boston case also coincides with growing public debate about three issues with big implications for prevention of violent crime and terrorism: Gun control, immigration reform, and civil liberties in an era of drones and databases of online information.

On firearms, this was a case where the alleged bombers used guns as well as explosives. One of four people killed in the bombing and its aftermath was an MIT campus police officer who was shot while in his car.

The Tsarnaev brothers exchanged gunfire with police during a chase and manhunt that ended Friday night.

This comes during a week when supporters of stronger background checks for gun purchases failed in a US Senate vote. The National Rifle Association and some others argue that Americans? safety can be enhanced through a greater presence of armed ?good guys,? including guards to prevent Newtown-style tragedies in schools. At the same time, many Americans want to see access to assault weapons restricted, and efforts to ensure that people with criminal records or diagnosed mental disorders can?t buy firearms.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/VzBQjdjVic0/No-more-hurting-people.-Will-a-safer-future-follow-Boston-tragedy-s-wake

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Boy Scouts Propose Lifting Ban of Gay Members

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/boy-scouts-propose-lifting-ban-of-gay-members/

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Bing leads to 5 times more malware than Google? Not so, says Microsoft

Taylor Soper , GeekWire ? ? ? 3 hrs.

Microsoft has finally responded to a study claiming that Bing?s search results delivered five times as much malware than Google?s, and its answer is simple: the study is flawed.

Last week, AV-TEST conducted a malware study that analyzed millions of websites and found that Bing was showing much more malware to users than its more popular rival (see graph below).

But David Felstead, Senior Development Lead at Bing, responded in a blog post Friday, writing that the study made a mistake by using a Bing API instead of examining the searches directly from Bing.com. This method, Bing says, resulted in misleading results because the API results bypassed its warning system and does not show warning labels.

?Bing actually does prevent customers from clicking on malware infected sites by disabling the link on the results page and showing the below message to stop people from going to the site,? he wrote.

But why does Bing even show them at all if they could be infected?

?We don?t explicitly remove malicious sites from the index because most are legitimate sites that normally don?t host malware but have been hacked,? Felstead writes. ?Our research shows that if sites like this remain infected for a long period of time, their ranking will naturally fall because customers won?t click on them.?

While he did say that ?this is a highly complex problem that all engines are constantly working to solve,? Felstead pointed out how a Google search of ?vacation hotline,? doesn?t give a malware warning, but Bing does.

He added that users will see the warning only once per 10,000 searches on Bing.

?In any case, the overall scale of the problem is very small,? Felstead wrote.

Russian search engine company Yanax also questioned the validity of AV-TEST?s study.

The monthly U.S. search stats from comScore came out for March last week and it showed Google with 67.1 percent of the search market share. Microsoft only has 16.9 percent, a number that?s been growing, albeit slowly.

Microsoft, meanwhile, continues to bash Google with its ?Scroogled? campaign, with the latest bombardment focusing on privacy issues with the Google Play Store.

Reach GeekWire staff reporter Taylor Soper at taylor@geekwire.com or on Twitter at @Taylor_Soper.

More from GeekWire:

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2af5ff5a/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Ctechnolog0Cbing0Eleads0E50Etimes0Emore0Emalware0Egoogle0Enot0Eso0Esays0E6C9531586/story01.htm

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Death toll rises to 14 in Texas plant explosion

A home near the West Fertilizer plant smolders Thursday (Erich Schlegal/Getty Images)

WEST, Texas?Investigators recovered two more bodies from the site of a massive fertilizer plant explosion on Friday, bringing the official death toll of Wednesday?s blast to 14 people.

At the same time, Mayor Tommy Muska discounted Sen. John Cornyn?s declaration earlier Friday that at least 60 residents remain unaccounted for after the blast. Speaking at a press conference with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Muska and other local officials described that number as an ?informal? list largely compiled of reports by out-of-town relatives who haven?t yet made contact with relatives displaced by the blast.

?There are people who do not have a home,? Muska said. ?They are living either in a hotel, they are living with Mama down the road (or) with their brother. The cousin from Dallas doesn?t know that. If they have a land line and they don?t have a cell phone, you?re not going to know where those people are.?

McLennen County Judge Scott Felton said the city was hopeful it would be able to ?eliminate 99 percent? of the people on the missing persons list. He added that it's possible that nobody is missing.

The press conference came after Perry made his first visit to the site, touring it first by air and then on the ground. The blast leveled a five-square block area of the city, damaging more than 150 structures including dozens of houses, a nursing home and a public school.

Perry said he found the debris just ?stunning? and offered his condolences to the many first responders who were killed in the blast. At least 11 of those killed in the blast were said to be members of West?s volunteer fire department. Muska said one of the victims was a close friend who served as ?my city secretary.? While he didn?t name him, he said one of the man?s duties was controlling the city?s official Facebook page and that they hadn?t been able to update it without him.

?I talked to him everyday,? he said, his voice thick with emotion. ?And now he?s not here.?

Perry announced that investigators had just one more building to examine before the search and rescue process is complete. Asked if they believe the number of dead will remain at 14, Perry and others at the news conference declined to comment.

Officials said they have not yet talked to the owner of the plant, but Perry said he supports an investigation into what happened to make sure an explosion like this does not happen again.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/officials-two-more-bodies-texas-fertilizer-plant-explosion-225901213.html

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